Seems to be a story the Guardian cook up every few months, but definitely seem to be hearing more and more about people choosing not to have children for environmental reasons.
Mackellen identifies as an antinatalist, a philosophical movement based around the tenet that it’s cruel to bring sentient lives, doomed to suffering and to causing suffering, into the world.
Might adopt this, seems like a much smugger (i.e. better) reason than “because I don’t want to”.
Yeah, fair enough.
I like the racing driver not having kids to save the environment
Dinner?
weird that people are even expected to justify why they aren’t having kids
Incidentally, at what age do you reckon I could get a vasectomy on the NHS?
totally fair enough but this is needlessly pretentious:
don’t think anyone who really wants children is doing this though.
This made me guiltily laugh
Xavi had a vasectomy at 26 and calls it “the best $500 I ever spent”
Guy needs an imagination or a hobby
Also, sad future generations will be deprived of a central midfielder with the pedigree of Xavi
DORIS: I’ve been thinking about it… and I think I know you’ve been thinking about it too, Gordo.
GORDO: I think I know what you’re talking about, and I’m so happy.
DORIS: I think…
GORDO: Say it (tears of joy welling up)
DORIS: Do you… do you want to try for a baby?
GORDO: YES, Doris! Oh yes I do!
DORIS: Oh, imagine us as parents. I can’t wait!
GORDO: Yes, Doris! Imagine the two of us… bringing a sentient life, doomed to suffer and to cause suffering, into this world!
DORIS: Hmm. This might call for a rethink
Doctors are reluctant to carry out the operation on people under the age of 30, but there are no definite limits.
Similar thing applies for women, too (eg Holly Brockwell’s fight to have the right to decide when to have one https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/woman-sterilised-aged-30-years-old-pregnancy-give-birth-no-regret-choice-holly-brockwell-gadgette-a7679876.html)
Great, another nine years to wait.
If all people who cared about the environment did this then the next generation would be brought up as mega world destroyers and these antinatalists left wailing into the tyre fires.
I wouldn’t go as far as any of the people in the article and it’s definitely not the most important reason, but the environmental impact does factor into my decision not to have kids
Oh great I’m going to have to have a kid now to get out of being lumped in with A Movement am I
He would never tell anyone not to do it, but if the subject comes up in conversation, he’ll politely suggest considering having only one child. “We need to reverse this population [growth] and that’s certainly one way to do it.”
I know little about the consequences of overpopulation – to my detriment – but I know more about the type of people I want to invite to dinner
Good luck to them. For me, the social and environmental cases alone are insufficient to determine whether to want children is morally obvious
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That and the notion that at current trends population is going to peak in, say 2060 or so so worries about long-term overpopulation might, perhaps, be a tad overstated.